Recent writings of David Chappell in ADT
 |
David Chappell is principal at Chappell & Associates, an education
and consulting firm focused on enterprise software technologies including
Microsoft .NET. He shares his insights regularly with readers of Application
Development Trends and adtmag.com. Here is a sampling of recent writings. |
.NET &
Beyond: J2EE split ending war with .NET
The big story in app
development for the past few years has been the competition between Microsoft’s
.NET Framework and products that support the J2EE specs. Lots of people have
talked about it, and many development organizations have been faced with this
issue. To a large extent, the .NET vs. J2EE struggle has defined the recent app
development landscape. This won’t be true much longer.
Take your pick:
Business processes or Bangalore
Business processes matter. And
two of today’s biggest trends, offshoring and Service-Oriented Architectures
(SOAs), will soon make them matter even more to software professionals. My guess
is that over the next few years, many people working in IT will face a simple
choice. One option is to get involved with business processes in a much more
explicit way. The other? Pack your bags and move to Bangalore, India, because
that is where your job is going to go.
Too much, too
soon
How fast can Microsoft change technologies? More
importantly, how fast can developers learn and exploit the new technologies that
Microsoft produces? .
Indigo: The end of the rainbow
When it finally ships, the Longhorn
release of Windows will include a number of interesting new technologies. But it
is the technology currently code-named “Indigo” that stands out as the most
important product for anyone who cares about how diverse systems are glued
together.
Why Web services aren't just a rerun
Web services can seem too good to be true. After decades of disagreement, all
of the major vendors have finally bought into a common approach to connecting
applications. It's hard not to harbor some doubts about whether this technology
will live up to its promise.
.NET and Beyond: The big bet
I can’t help admiring the ambition of people working on Web services security. The problem they face -- creating multivendor agreements on authentication, authorization and more for SOAP -- is tremendously difficult. Not only that, but in a very real sense, no one has ever solved this problem before. Complete multi-vendor security for distributed applications? Please -- it’s been a pipe dream. Yet the existing Web services work in this area is actually nearing completion.
.NET & Beyond: One more time: What exactly
is .NET?
I know marketing people who think that creating confusion in the minds of customers
is a good thing. “If they’re confused,” one of them told me,
“they’ll need to come to us to get things cleared up.” None
of the marketing people I know with this attitude work at Microsoft, but it
can sometimes seem as if Microsoft’s marketers think this way, too. A
case in point is .NET.
More from the Chappell archives:
.NET & Beyond: Why there’s no business case for Web services
Web services security? Not yet.
Two cheers for standards